Page 101 of The Midnight Order
Her pleasure means more than his silly pride and bullshit guilt.
She deserves to be coveted like the fucking queen that she is.
And when it’s time for that, I’ll be the one to deliver that attention.
“Tell me something,” she whispers, looking up from where she’s snuggled against my chest.
Holding her feels like the rawest, most straightforward thing in the world, as if I was always meant to do this.
“What?” I ask.
She shrugs with one shoulder. “I don’t know. Tell me one of your favorite memories.”
“I’m over nine hundred years old. There are so many.” It’s not that I’m trying to get out of telling her. It’s only that traveling back and reliving memories as old as I am sometimes hurts.
“Tell me whatever comes to mind.”
“A story?”
“From your life,” she presses, unwavering.
I think back to all the lives I’ve lived, all the names I’ve gone by. Trying to pick one I loved the most wasn’t hard, but it would be difficult to think of such an auspicious time before it all fell apart.
Before I became the shell of my former self at the hands of witches who used me for their gain.
“I don’t want you to be sad. Forget I asked,” she whispers, gently caressing my cheek.
It’s the softest anyone’s touched me since Soliel, the one woman I thought loved me over all else.
Until she, too, tried to use me.
I remember that fact and let a guard wall fall around my heart.
I’m unwilling to go through that hurt and betrayal again. I can’t.
“I was born in Transylvania,” I begin, allowing my mind to travel back to a time before my mind broke.
Silver snorts, and I eye her. “Sorry. It’s just, could you be more on brand for a vampire?”
My lips turn down. “Are you going to listen or not?”
She settles in, waving me on.
“You’ll now know the territory as modern-day Romania, but before it was Romania, it was my home. My parents, who were vampiric royalty, raised me in a massive coven, which afforded me many luxuries.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. I bet the woman fawned over you.”
I shake my head, fighting a grin. “That came later when I lived at court.”
“Court?”
“Mm. I was summoned to the court of the Vampire King, then known as King Strixx. My parents were higher in the ranks of the coven. It was a natural ascension for me to serve my king.”
“Wow! A king? Do vampires still have a king?”
“No. We’re governed by a central coven now, The Severn.”
She’s pulled up now, sitting with her back to the headboard. “I thought you were going to sleep?”
